[Article] Glyph combinations across word breaks in the Voynich Manuscript

[Emma May Smith]

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but you just aren't giving Prescott Currier any respect whatsoever (not academic, not linguistic, nothing), and he basically invented the whole field you've picked up on to write your paper. The big difference is that Currier had the good sense to realise that there was a basic underlying problem with the kind of Baxian simple-minded linguistic turn so often applied to Voynichese, and that this wasn't something that could be hand-waved away.

Nick, it's not harsh, it's rude and unfair.

• We took inspiration from Currier's work and acknowledge his priority in the (published) paper.
  
• We started from scratch with the statistics as so much more is available to us now in terms of transcriptions and computing.
  
• We didn't discuss his rejections because there is no way to use them as an argument due to vagueness:
  • We found a linguistic explanation and do not know if it is one he rejected as he didn't specify what they were. What is the alternative, to say: "Currier rejected all linguistic explanations so we didn't bother looking at linguistic explanations"? Would that have satisfied anybody? Would it have respected Currier to treat everything he said as the final word?
    
  • We created several other possible causes of word break combinations and explained our reasons for rejecting them. Thus allowing others to understand why we settled on the conclusion we did, and giving them the ability to refute it.
    
  • Yet we couldn't specifically argue against Currier's suggestions as he didn't specify what they were. What is the alternative, to say: "We guessed what Currier was thinking and concluded he was dead wrong"? Would that have satisfied anybody? How would it respect Currier to put arguments into his mouth?
    
• Our approach is nothing like that of Stephen Bax. You know this. Please do not present it as such just because you happen to disagree with us. Indeed, only our conclusions are specifically linguistic, the results and analysis are not.
  

The only reasonable criticism that you raise is about the text being non-homogenous. We should have made it clear that our conclusion applies to where word-break combinations are present, and that there would need to be an explanation why they are not the same strength throughout the whole text. But, given that the differences between Currier A and B are well-acknowledged, any explanation of word break combinations would have to do likewise. Even were it due to "syllables, letters, even digits" the same problem would require explanation.